1. Yesterday we mentioned that Luke Winn had written a piece handing out eight different coaching awards based on efficiency metrics from the entire season. His follow-up article published on Thursday broke down six more awards based on the data from the 2012 NCAA Tournament. Several of the usual suspects populate this list, but you might be surprised at which head coach had the best after-timeout numbers in the Dance this year — he’s widely considered a very good coach, but probably not to the extent he deserves.
2. Assistant coaches around the country must have thrown up in their mouths Thursday after it was reported that Illinois State head coach Tim Jankovich would leave his position to become a “coach-in-waiting” at SMU under new top man Larry Brown. The reported salary that Jankovich will earn while he waits for the itinerant 71-year old to get bored and retire again is over $700,000 per year, nearly double his pay at ISU. Jankovich went 104-64 (.619) in five seasons as a Redbird but despite four 20-wins seasons, he never broke through to the NCAA Tournament there (settling for four NIT appearances instead). The sound that you now hear murmuring in the background is the collective scrum by the nation’s top assistants clamoring to renegotiate their compensation packages. Wow.
3. It’s the offseason and although we’re still only about three weeks removed from the national championship game, some of the key questions heading into the 2012-13 season are already apparent. In this piece by Mike DeCourcy, you get a double-dip of the Cincinnati Kid (replete with goatee) through both his writing and a video clip discussion of some of those issues. Will UCLA improve its defense with their additions? Can Louisville find a reliable shot-maker? Can Thad Matta find someone to replace Jared Sullinger in the post? These and a couple other answers await if you click on over to TSN.
4. Roy Williams did a Q&A with UNC fans in Charlotte on Wednesday night, leading to some interesting comments from the venerable coach who is heading into his 10th full season as the head coach of the Tar Heels. Of note: his team considered cutting down the nets in Cameron Indoor Stadium after winning the ACC regular season title, but thought that such a display “might cause a scene” (ya think?); recruiting the Wear Twins over Mason Plumlee was “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done” (um…); and he has not completely bought into the 1-and-done methodology for winning a championship, making “some decisions over the last four or five years to not recruit certain kids, because it’s just going to be a one and done” (hey, John Wall).
5. Finally, we’d be remiss as we close out this week if we didn’t at least mention the strong possibility that the BCS will move away from its incomprehensible system of choosing a football national champion and finally, inexorably, move toward a four-team playoff system beginning in 2014. There aren’t many policy decisions in public life that are complete no-brainers, but this is one of them. A decade from now people will mostly wonder why such an elementary solution to a complex problem took so long to implement. They’ll find the answer in the pocketbooks and vacation homes of bowl executives, but once January Madness takes hold and they realize that the real dollars lie in capturing casual fans (see: Bowl, Super), they too will realize the error of their ways. Congrats to our college football brethren for finally joining the 20th century.

This Weekend’s Lede. Every Week a Playoff… Until It Isn’t. No matter your opinion on whether Oklahoma State or Alabama should have the right to play LSU for the BCS national championship next month, can we at least come to an agreement that college football’s tired meme of “every week a playoff” has once again been blown out of the water as farcical? Look, we all know that the NCAA Tournament system is far from perfect in terms of anointing the best team as the champion, but like every other major American sport, at least every team that has a reasonable claim to the crown gets a chance to prove its worth on the hardwood. The old saying goes, “in order to be the best, you have to beat the best,” but as this comical CFB playoff scenario shows, at least one deserving school will get no such chance to do that. On to basketball…

Your Watercooler Moment. Anthony Davis’ Game-Saving Block.

Kentucky vs. North Carolina. North Carolina vs. Kentucky. What else could it be? Saturday afternoon’s tilt in Lexington was one of those rare fulfilling games where the action on the floor not only lived up to the hype, but exceeded it. And the hype for this game was extraordinary, especially considering that it took place on the first Saturday in December rather than sometime deep in March. Our post-game takes on what we’d seen in the one-point Kentucky win are located here, but the long and short of it is this: Carolina should feel as if they were only a play away from winning a difficult road game that didn’t cater to its strengths (61% on threes, but only 33% on twos), while Kentucky should feel that its extremely young but talented team stood toe-to-toe with the other most talented team in America and didn’t blink. Both UNC and UK should be playing in New Orleans next Spring, and if we’re lucky they’ll tip off for the fourth time in just over 16 months with nothing less than the national championship on the line.

Five More Weekend Storylines.

1. Big East Dominates SEC in Challenge. Coming into Friday, the SEC was tied with the Big East at 2-2 in this year’s Challenge. The Big East then won the next six games before dropping the final two Saturday evening to finish at 8-4. The most impressive wins over the weekend were Pittsburgh and Cincinnati’s road wins at Tennessee and Georgia, respectively(the Big East had four roadies), and as we noted in our commentary on Saturday, the Big East appears to be an eight- or nine-team NCAA Tournament conference, whereas the SEC seems to deserve roughly half that. Nothing too surprising here, just further confirmation that the Big East, along with the Big Ten, are the top two conferences in college basketball this season. Read the rest of this entry »

A report yesterday from Deadspin brought to our attention that the NCAA makes a lot of money. Not that we didn’t already know that, and not that it wasn’t already publicly available (apparently Will Leitch’s progeny whiffed on that one), but to see the NCAA’s financial statements for 2008 provides an additional layer of context to the invisible hand driving the shifting landscape of college athletics.

If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a million times already — college football drives the bus in conference realignment and executive decision-making, with college basketball sitting in the back with the other ne’er-do-wells. But why is that so? Nearly every metric shows that our sport is not only popular, but thriving. March Madness could be America’s most beloved sporting event. Attendance figures are still on the uptick. The recent Carrier Classic set a ratings record for a November college basketball game (on a Friday night, no less). The NCAA just over a year ago signed a $10.8 billion (that’s a “B”) contract with CBS/Turner Sports to broadcast NCAA Tournament games until 2024 — that’s $771 million annually, in case you were wondering. These are not characteristics of a sport without fans.

The sport will never be as popular as the three major professional sports or even college football, but it’s not a second-class citizen on the landscape either. It produces real dollars that in a rational environment should extensively contribute to long-term decision-making. And yet we’re told again and again that it doesn’t matter. So the question we have is… why? And the answer here is the same answer found in most every other decision we make as a species: the rational pursuit of self-interest.

Take a look at these numbers. In 2008, the NCAA brought in $550 million in television revenue for the NCAA Tournament and another $70 million for its various championships. Keep in mind that the NCAA sees nothing from major college football with its archaic but separate bowl system. By removing all the non-revenue sports and for the sake of expediency, let’s call it a round $600 million that the NCAA made from college basketball that year. That money is then filtered through the belly of the NCAA where it is parsed to pay for everything else — administration of all its championships ($119 million), assorted NCAA programs ($109 million), management ($26 million), and so on. Before long that $600M is cut nearly in half to $360 million, which is then parsed out to 31 D-I conferences using a complicated ‘share’ system based on five years worth of NCAA Tournament performances.  Here’s how that system paid out in 2008:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lede.  Yes, we’re guilty of making the same, tired, cliched reference to not a real championship every year, but we’re also tired of the hypocrisy and lies that we’re spoon-fed as justification for it.  Tonight NCAA football once again crowned a champion using a system that fails to allow for every team to have a legitimate chance to win it all.  This would actually be fine with us if the powers-that-be were honest with the public about their blind pursuit of enormous dollars and said so; but instead they hide behind patently absurd arguments about the sanctity of student-athletes, tradition and preserving the importance of the regular season.  The same regular season where a team can go undefeated but not be invited onto the grand stage; the same plantation-style economic tradition that, as Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post nails, ensures it; and the same mantras about student-athletes and academics that allows schools to play games on nearly any night of the week and has bastardized the postseason to the point where nobody cares much beyond the singular final game.  It’s utterly shameful, and college football fans who defend it are a little like those poor souls who are fooled by big business into actually believing that the only pathway to a fulfilling life is through taking on mountains of debt.  If they’d take a step back and remove heart and emotion from the equation, they’d actually see that they’re the ones getting played.  And why is this diatribe on a college basketball site?  Because the BCS machine drives college athletics to an absurd point where nobody programs such as Texas Tech have more sway in the collegiate landscape than historic basketball programs like Kansas, who are nearly thrown by the wayside in pursuit of the football dollar.  Out of courtesy to the BCS national championship game, it was a light night… but on to hoops…

Your Watercooler Moment.  71% From Three.  A team isn’t going to lose many games when it shoots over 70% from behind the arc, and tonight’s performance by Marquette against Notre Dame was no exception.  The Golden Eagles went 12-17 from deep compared to the 3-16 that the Irish threw up, and the game was really never close in the second half as a result.  Like seemingly every year since Buzz Williams took over at Marquette, new players have stepped up to replace others, and this year’s duo to pick up for the loss of Lazar Hayward has been Dwight Buycks and Jae Crowder.  Buycks (21/4 tonight) has increased his scoring output by nearly four points per night over last season and Crowder has come in from the JuCo ranks to contribute 13/7 per game.  With four players (including Darius Johnson-Odom and Jimmy Butler) capable of going for 20+ on a given night (Vander Blue is a fifth if you want to get crazy), Marquette has as much offensive firepower as nearly any team in the country (and certainly in the Big East).  Their only problem is defensively where they struggle to make stops, but on nights like tonight when things are dropping through the net with regularity, the Golden Eagles are very tough to beat.  Considering that all of MU’s losses this year were to good teams in close games — Duke, Pitt, Wisconsin, Vanderbilt, Gonzaga — if Williams’ team can find a way to make a few more defensive stands down the stretch, they could be dynamite by March.

Tweet of the Night.  Wow, this is brilliant.

The Lede.  Thankfully We Decide Our Champions on the Court.  And we don’t use awful naming conventions when doing it.  Imagine if the First Four was actually called the Toys “R” Us First Four, or the Final Four became the Batesville Casket Company Final Four?  That’s essentially what we’re looking at with some of these absurd bowl names — our favorites: the Beef “O” Brady Bowl and the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.  Maybe the two bowls should morph together and then they’d have the whole eating thing figured out.  On to more serious issues, though.  For seemingly the fourteenth consecutive year, the BCS national title game featuring Auburn and Oregon is not without controversy, as there are three unbeaten teams left standing with only two spots available.  Perhaps you’re of the opinion that a school like TCU (12-0), with its weak schedule and lack of gridiron pedigree, is not worthy of playing in that sports’ marquee event.  To this we say: neither was Butler.  Yet somehow the small college from the north side of Indianapolis that didn’t belong there found itself capable of beating two of basketball’s best coaches (Jim Boeheim and Tom Izzo) and come within a hair of beating its best (Mike Krzyzewski).  It’s an absurd system that if used in basketball would guarantee that Duke would have won at least ten “mythical” national titles in the last twenty years, while robbing us of the magic of schools like George Mason and Butler along the way.  Critics of the system correctly point out that FBS college football is the only NCAA sport that does not have a playoff system to determine its champion, but it’s also the only American sport that becomes less interesting as the season progresses.  The single most exciting time is kickoff weekend, when anything seems possible.  Enjoy your BBVA Compass Bowl featuring a 2-6 SEC team, folks — we’ll be over here watching games that actually build up to something.

This Weekend’s Marquee Games.  For additional analysis on the major games from Saturday check out our Instant Analyses from Saturday (part 1, part 2, part 3).

Zeller Was Great Against UK on Saturday (AP/G. Broome)

• Over 4,000 Wins in Chapel Hill. But it was the embattled Tar Heels of North Carolina who added win #2009 on this day, as Tyler Zeller reminded us how good he can be when he asserts himself (27/11/5 blks).  In a wrinkle we’ve never seen before, Zeller fouled out the entire Kentucky frontline with his play inside; his length (along with teammate John Henson’s) frustrated UK star forward Terrence Jones for the first time all season (3-17 FG for nine points).  The Carolina guard play still left something to be desired, shooting 6-24 from the field and totaling 21 points, but this is a known commodity — Carolina’s rise and fall this season will generally rest on how well their big men play each night out.  We came away from this game thinking that we were viewing two flawed teams — Kentucky on the inside, and UNC on the perimeter — but that Kentucky, despite losing the game, has the greater upside.
• National Title Rematch. Butler proved for more than a half that it wasn’t going to quietly skulk away into the night after its run to the national championship game and a shaky start to this season.  As our correspondent Matt Patton wrote from the game: “First off, Butler can play: people have been down on the Bulldogs after they were blown out by Louisville and upset by Evansville, but they showed that they still have some star power and one of the smartest coaches in the game in Brad Stevens.  I thought Stevens really kept Duke on their heels the first half, giving the Blue Devils fits with a triangle and two zone and expertly controlling the tempo during the first half.  Butler also showcased some impressive depth, outscoring Duke’s talented bench 33-13 (a large amount of that credit goes to Shawn Vanzant, who had a spectacular second half).  If the Bulldogs take care of the ball like they did today and keep their stars on the court (i.e. minimize fouls and injuries), they can still surprise some people come March.”  We don’t disagree at all.  Butler isn’t a top ten team, but they will always play legitimate defense, and once they get their sea legs under them, nobody will want to face the Bulldogs (again) next Spring.
• Battle of Seattle.  We haven’t been as high as many others have been on Gonzaga this year, and any injury to Elias Harris notwithstanding, the reason was fully on display Saturday in the Battle of Seattle game against Illinois: the Zags don’t defend.  Illinois has never traditionally been a high-octane offense under Bruce Weber, but against a Gonzaga defense that would rather reach than move, Illinois repeatedly picked Mark Few’s team apart for wide-open threes (12-23) and dunks.  Giving up twelve treys is a problem against any team, and this is the second time this season that the Zags have done so in a loss (Kansas State was the other).  This definitely appears to be Weber’s best Illini squad since the 2005 national runner-up, and it helps in that Illinois has six players capable of putting up double figures any given night.  The maturation of Brandon Paul in particular from a gunner incapable of taking a good shot in the flow of the offense (33% last year) to a disciplined shooter (52% this year) has been a pleasure to watch.  This Illinois team is capable of big things this year.

SoCal Upsets. The most surprising upsets of the weekend came at the very end of it, as the two biggest Los Angeles programs made news in one way or another.  First, UCLA, coming off a loss against top-five Kansas on Thursday night that universally slammed the officials for bailing the Jayhawks out, must have still been feeling the effects.  They allowed Montana (without Anthony Johnson, mind you) to come into Pauley Pavilion and shoot 52% in a 66-57 victory that must have UCLA fans scratching their heads perplexed.  The two stars of the Kansas game, Tyler Honeycutt and Joshua Smith, combined for 4-20 shooting and 15 total points.  Meanwhile, on the other side of town, USC, a team who had already racked up bad losses against Rider, Bradley, TCU and Nebraska, managed to completely flummox the young Texas Longhorns for an easy 73-56 victory.  If you saw either one of these results coming, then you’re well beyond the scope of this site.  Unbelievable.

Read the rest of this entry »

With all the talk about the coming 96-team tournament, many in the sports media have forgotten that there is already another ridiculous major college sport championship in place: the BCS. We took you through this process in a post last year, but it’s worth going over again as the blogosphere is ablaze with opinions on changing our beloved NCAA Tournament.

Here are the basic ground rules:

1. We are following the BCS Football guidelines as closely as possible. Obviously there are some differences. A college basketball team is expected to win more than 9 games (we kept a cut-off at a 75% winning percentage). We replaced the Notre Dame rule with the Duke rule since they both have sketchy TV contracts (Notre Dame with NBC and Duke with ESPN).
2. I used the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls as the human polls and ESPN.com’s InsiderRPI, KenPom.com, and Sagarin’s ratings as the computer polls. The computer polls include data from the NCAA Tournament, but as you will see it didn’t affect the results that significantly.
3. We used the traditional BCS calculations for determining each team’s score weighing the two human polls and the combined computer poll average as 1/3 of a team’s total score each.

Here are the results:

We will let you digest that for a minute and will provide more information/analysis and the BCS Bowls after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

So When Do Boise and Alabama Play? The interminable bowl season finally came to an end with the only game that mattered, as Texas’ Colt McCoy got knocked out of the BCS National faux-Championship Game and Alabama’s Nick Saban earned his second title as a member of a rival SEC school.  So we’re once again left with more than one unbeaten team in the college football season and we have no legitimate way of separating those teams other than using statistics and computer printouts, a tenuous proposition at best.  After all, Cal was a ten-point favorite versus UCLA last night.  That’s what all of the computer algorithms told us.  So they’re clearly the better team, right?  No reason to even play the game, right?  Let’s just declare Cal the winner based on their strength of schedule and power rating…  Get outta here with that nonsense.  Seriously.  Thankfully we’re moving on to basketball, where our championships are earned on the court.  (ed. note: we’re going to publish this picture every time it’s appropriate, which, given the BCS’s foibles year after year, will be annually).

Other Games of National Interest.  Well, sorta.  Slow night.  There was only one game involving any of the BCS conference teams, and they were both from the Big Ten.  Guess they knew that league wouldn’t be playing on the gridiron tonight.

• Michigan 64, Penn State 55.  The Wolverines got off to a horrid start in State College, shooting 0-12 from three and finding themselves down 31-16 at the half.  But they kept their poise and made a huge second-half run of 38-13 to close out the game and put John Beilein’s team at 2-1 in the Big Ten.  DeShawn Sims was huge, scoring 25 points and pulling six boards, but it was really Laval Lucas-Perry’s four second-half treys that helped spur the run.  With games against Northwestern and Indiana coming up at home, UM has a good shot to go to 4-1 before trips to Madison and West Lafayette later this month.
• Western Kentucky 67, South Alabama 64 (OT).  This was a key early-season game in the Sun Belt, and WKU got the leg up by taking this one in overtime tonight.  Steffphon Pettigrew (16/5) hit a layup with five seconds remaining to tie the game and send it to the extra period.  In the OT, which  only saw a total of seven points between the two teams, AJ Slaughter (18/5) hit the go-ahead three and WKU hung on.  USA will get another chance at the Hilltoppers in Bowling Green on February 18.
• Xavier 68, La Salle 62.  XU got a win in its A10 opener after nearly blowing a 20-point second half lead on the road tonight in Philadelphia.  Jordan Crawford had 22/6/4 assts to improve upon his 19 PPG average coming into the contest.  Of course, he’s also thirteenth in the nation in shot% at 35.4, which means he’s our candidate for Human Cannon Midwest.
• Oakland 67, Oral Roberts 64.  Oakland picked up a key Summit League win tonight on the road against its likely toughest competition in Tulsa behind Keith Benson’s 13/8/5 blks and Johnathan Jones’ 16/4 assts/3 stls.  Interesting that Jones was the nation’s leading assist man last season at 8.1 per game, but he’s only dropping 5.6 dimes so far this year.

Sunday you were probably there with every other college sports fan glued to your television at 8 pm as the bowl pairings were announced, right?  Orrrr… not, as it came in dead last in its time slot on Fox.  So why weren’t you there with your pencil and brackets bowl matchup worksheets in hand?  Because you knew that there is only one more college football game that matters this season, and you already knew who was playing for it (i.e., traditional powers Alabama and Texas).  Other than to the fans of the individual schools who can take a holiday-season vacation to (hopefully) a warmer clime, the other 477 bowls are utterly meaningless to the crowning of a national champion, a jury-rigged travesty that continues to barf on itself seemingly every year as teams who win every single one of their games are considered unworthy for a shot at the ultimate prize (particular hilarity reserved for when a non-trad BCS team such as Cincinnati is left out).

Why Mess With Perfection?

We Can Actually Learn Something From NCAA Football… Well, Sorta

The best argument that the BCS apologists make every year is that their system values the regular season, and this is true to a certain extent.  The problem is that it overvalues the regular season at the expense of the postseason.  It values the regular season so much that it excludes worthy teams from its national championship picture based on ambiguous metrics that include computer rankings and vaguely-tuned in coaches and sportswriters who have been shown to not put equitable and informed efforts into their ballots.  Consider that last year’s basketball computer rankings — both Sagarin and KenPom — could have placed Memphis against UNC in the “BCS title game” at the end of the regular season.  Given their personnel losses, did anyone actually believe Memphis was a Final Four team last year, much less a title contender?  Of course not.  Thank goodness for small favors… and the NCAA Tournament.

This is why, when those of us who favor a college football playoff argue in favor of it, we push for an 8-team or 16-team playoff.  Like the current format of the NCAA Tournament, such an entity would allow for every realistic potential NCAA football champion to have a shot at glory.  Cincy, Boise and TCU this year – check.  Utah last year – check.  Boise again in 2006 – check.  And so on back through the running comedy that has been the BCS over the last twelve years.  The reason that we support this system (over a 32-team playoff, for example) is that it allows for college football to crown a tested and worthy champion while also respecting the integrity of a national championship by only including deserving and excellent teams.

70% of BCS Teams Do Not Belong in the NCAA Tournament

When we read today that the NCAA is considering expansion of March Madness to 96 teams from its current 65, effectively folding the NIT into the Big Dance and adding another week to the Tournament, we really cannot get on board with this idea.  Why not?  Because put simply, the additional teams that will be invited are not worthy.  Every year there are certainly a few bubble teams that have a great case for inclusion in the field of 65; but there aren’t 32 of them, and if we add another layer of middling BCS teams, we only serve to cheapen what is right now the greatest spectacle for excitement in all of sports while simultaneously further minimizing the importance of the regular season.  Seriously, why even have a 16-game ACC schedule if you’ll get a bid by winning six or seven games?

Only a Handful of Bubble Teams Deserve Entry

Let’s look at this from a numbers perspective.  Consider last year’s NIT field (presumably the #66-#97-ranked teams, discounting for the regular season champion clause).  We’ll focus exclusively on BCS teams here because they are the most likely beneficiaries of the new setup.  By our calculation, if the 2009 NCAA Tournament had included the NIT field, almost half (15) of the additional teams would have come from the BCS conferences, which would mean that FIFTY-ONE of the SEVENTY-THREE (70%) BCS conference teams would have been invited to the NCAA Tournament.  So what’s the profile threshold that would have gotten you a bid last year using this format?

• Bubble Team (19-12, 9-10) – the typical team in this group lost to nearly everyone they were supposed to, beat very few elite teams, and mostly built up the majority of their wins in a soft nonconference schedule.  They finished anywhere between 7th-10th in their conference and, on average, won one game in the conference tournament.  There was nothing particularly interesting or compelling about any of these teams, and the odds of any of them making a run to the Round of 32, much less the Sweet Sixteen, would have been minimal.  See below breakdown for a detailed look at the fifteen BCS teams that would have been invited last season.

So why add them?  The answer that the coaches want to expand the NCAA Tournament is not satisfactory (of course they do!).  The answer that media executives also want to expand it also falls on deaf ears (they are selling a product and can’t be relied upon to act in the best interests of the game).  Whoever is seriously listening to this idea really needs to be removed from his or her post.  Why would you mess with something that already works so damn well?  As Mike DeCourcy so succinctly put it in today’s article, this is a “horrible idea” and would end up being a “disaster.”  Couldn’t agree more, Mike.

2009 NIT BCS Team Breakdown

*note – all records and stats are prior to the 2009 NIT (conf reg season finish)

ACC – 7 NCAA teams, 2 NIT teams

• Virginia Tech (18-14, 8-10) – lost 7 of their last 9 games (t-7).
• Miami (FL)  (18-12, 7-10) – lost 8 of their last 12 games (t-7).

Big East – 7 NCAA teams, 3 NIT teams

• Georgetown (16-14, 7-12) – is this a joke?  Georgetown couldn’t beat anyone in the Big East; finished 4-11 in their last fifteen games. (t-11)
• Notre Dame (18-14, 9-11) – ND at one point lost seven Big East games in a row; five of their final six wins were against teams rated #80 or below. (t-9)
• Providence (19-13, 11-9) – at least PC had a winning Big East record, right? (t-7)

Big Ten – 7 NCAA teams, 2 NIT teams

• Penn State (22-11, 11-9) – PSU had a reasonable argument for inclusion last year with their resume, and they showed it by winning the NIT. (t-4)
• Northwestern (17-13, 8-11) – NW did not and their resume was in no way supportive of an NCAA berth last year. (9)

Big 12 – 6 NCAA teams, 3 NIT teams

• Kansas State (21-11, 9-8) – K-State is another bubble team that could have arguably received a bid to the Big Dance last year (t-4).
• Baylor (20-14, 8-12) – Baylor, on the other hand, went 2-10 in their last twelve regular season games prior to making a Big 12 Tourney run (10).
• Nebraska (18-12, 8-9) – lost five of their last eight and was sorely lacking in quality wins over the course of the season (9).

Pac-10 – 6 NCAA teams, 1 NIT team

• Washington State (17-15, 9-11) – a mediocre Pac-10 team who lost to nearly every good team it played last season. (7)

SEC – 3 NCAA teams, 4 NIT teams

• South Carolina (21-9, 10-7) – best wins of the year were against who?  Kentucky and Florida? (t-1 East)
• Auburn (22-11, 11-7) – at least the Tigers finished strong, winning 9 of their last 11 games. (2 West)
• Florida (23-10, 10-8) – again, the Gators beat and lost to a bunch of other mediocre SEC teams – how is that NCAA-worthy? (3 East)
• Kentucky (20-13, 9-9) – losing 8 of their final 11 regular season games does not an NCAA team make. (t-4 East)

Out of the above group, there are maybe 3-4 teams that had a reasonable argument to be included in the field of 65 teams.  Other than that, do we really want teams like the 2009 versions of Georgetown, Kentucky, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Miami (FL), and Baylor getting bids to the Big Dance?  Let those teams stay in the NIT where they belong.  Please.

John Stevens is a featured writer for Rush The Court.

For the next 72 hours you’re going to be bombarded with advice on how to fill out your NCAA Tournament bracket.  It’ll be a steady diet of punchy one-liners like “Always pick 12s against 5s!” and “Ones always beat sixteens!”  Sure, there’s some good advice out there.  Some of it’s pretty obvious.  And some of it just blows.  I’m not saying I’ve got the market cornered on how to pick a perfect bracket, and you should beware anyone who makes that claim.  But I think it’s good to take a quick look at some of what these so-called experts are telling you.

First, there are two things we can accept as axiomatic and move on:

1) One-seeds always beat 16s.
2) All four one-seeds almost never get to the Final Four (we know last year is the exception).

Right.  We get it.  Anyone who uses one of those as a selling point in their analysis is someone you should ignore.  If you’re reading a piece on NCAA tournament bracket-filling advice, it’s certain that you already have those pieces of information.  It isn’t news to you.  So let’s move on…

ALWAYS TAKE 12-SEEDS

Wrong.  This is my favorite piece of bracket-building advice.  It’s a fad statement because of how, in the past several years, 12-seeds have almost always scored at least one victory against 5-seeds in a given tournament.  Most people take this too far and choose three or even all four 12s to move on in their brackets.  But according to BBState.com (a hoops stat nerd’s wet dream — this means you, rtmsf), the all-time record for 12s against 5s is a discouraging 34-83, or about 29%.  This means that you’re completely justified picking a single 12-seed that you’ve got a hunch about to score a win over a 5, but leaving the rest alone.  If you choose right, great!  You showed those punk opponents of yours how it’s done.  Worst-case scenario if youre wrong is you drop a couple of points if another 12 that you didn’t select pulls off the upset.  Chances are, one 12 will pick up a win.  So I wouldn’t leave it alone and take all the 5s.  But choose a SINGLE 12-seed, and don’t sweat it if you’re wrong.

THE NCAA TOURNAMENT IS ABOUT UPSETS

That isn’t necessarily an untrue statement, since we all love a good tournament upset unless it’s our alma.  Those stories are often what make the event so special and add to its legend.  But it does not apply to bracket-building.  Notice how most brackets have increasing point values as the rounds progress, i.e. you get a single point for correctly picking a first-round winner, two points for a second-round winner, etc.  So if you have a bunch of upset-picks advancing to later rounds, since higher-seeded teams usually end up rising to the top, all you’ve done is penalize yourself in the big-reward games.  Some bracket competitions assign even higher point values than I’ve mentioned above (8 points for a correct Final Four pick, 15 for a national champion, and so on) so it’s more important in those systems.  The payoff, then — keep the upsets limited to the first round and maybe the second where you can’t get hurt much if you choose wrong.  Now, I’m not telling you pick a totally worthless and boring bracket where the “better” seed always wins.  That’s the height of douchebaggery.  This is indeed about having fun, and it’s fun to pick a couple of mid-major upstarts to stick it to one or two BCS goons for a round or two.  It adds meaning to games you might not even watch or care about under any other circumstance.  If you’re wrong, and your favorite 10-seed doesn’t make it to the Sweet 16 and that 14 doesn’t score that first-round victory you predicted, big deal.  It’s your bracket and you took the chance.  But if you care about winning, keep that stuff in the early round games, and fill in your later rounds with more established programs.

CHOOSE A CHAMPION WITH GOOD GUARDS

A generic piece of advice.  Otherwise stated as “You have to have good guard play to win the title.”  What are you going to do, choose a team with bad guards?  Even if the person espousing this really means that you should choose a championship team and/or Final Four teams that are “led” by guards, be careful.  Look at every champion crowned in the 2000s.  Every one of them has forwards and/or centers who meant just as much or even more to the team than any of their guards.  This is why these coaches are out there busting their tails on the recruiting trail.  It’s talent at EVERY position that determines success at a program and in the Big Dance.  You can’t just have good guards, you need good players.  The statement that you have to have “good guard play” as a necessary component for tournament success is a bit of advice that sounds insightful and has therefore spun out of control in recent years as some sage bit of wisdom.  Don’t even consider this piece of pseudo-advice when you’re filling in your bracket.

The best piece of advice you can possibly keep at the front of your mind when building your bracket is to have fun with it.  Even if you fill out an all-upset or an all-chalk bracket (bag… of… douche!), it’s your bracket and you should do whatever adds to your enjoyment of the tournament.  It’s kind of like playing hardways or snake-eyes at a casino in Las Vegas.  True, the insiders and experts might roll their eyes and snicker at you as you reduce your chances of making money with those plays.  But, I figure, I don’t get to Vegas too often, so while I’m there I might as well have fun and do what I want.  And of course it’s great if it hits!  Yeah, it might not be the smartest play, but when I go home and someone asks me “Did you have fun?” I don’t want to say, “No, but at least the experts don’t think I’m an idiot.  I think I may have impressed those guys.”  Same thing with filling in tournament brackets, as far as I’m concerned.  But I think if, as I’ve outlined above, you can put a critical eye on those oft-repeated bits of advice, you’ll be able to maximize both how much fun you’ll have with this and your chances of winning.

With the release of the brackets on Sunday evening there has been quite a bit of controversy (Arizona over St. Mary’s being the predominant gripe) and there have been some interesting moments with Jay Bilas and Digger Phelps ganging up on Dick Vitale and almost bringing him to tears. However, it was nothing compared to the furor that we saw when the BCS released its final poll that determined the BCS bowl games and more importantly the national championship. We thought it would be a fun exercise to try to make a mock BCS basketball system. I used the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls as the human polls and ESPN.com’s InsiderRPI, KenPom.com, and Sagarin’s ratings as the computer polls. There are a couple polls I excluded for other reasons: Kenneth Massey’s (wasn’t updated yet) and Jerry Palm’s (not free). I did not throw out the high and low computer polls for two reasons: (1) we only had 3 available and (2) they were fairly similar with a few exceptions (Gonzaga in the RPI, but they weren’t going to be a factor anyways because of Memphis). ESPN.com’s InsiderRPI didn’t include the games from Sunday, but after looking at the final results they would not have had any impact on the rankings  based on the teams involved. Here are the results:

If you want to try and follow along, here are the BCS criteria.

Now onto the match-ups. . .

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